1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a structure for a hanger, and more specifically, to a hanger having a pad coupled to a clamp body.
2. Related Art
As is well known, clothes hangers are useful for storing, transporting, and drying clothes that are hung from them. Problems with hangers having hard clamp plates to pinch and hold clothing include that they can crush, wrinkle, weaken, or tear the fabric pinched between them, and often can not grip and hold clothes as well as soft gripping materials such as the tips of human fingers.
The related art provides a clothes hanger having clamps with clamp plates modified by mounting a soft elastic (e.g., silicone rubber) pad upon the inner surface of each clamp plate such that the soft pads will make direct contact with the fabric of the clothes and apply substantially all of the clamp""s force upon the fabric and upon each other.
Although radio frequency plastic welding, chemical (e.g., adhesive) bonding and other processes are generally able to firmly bond the soft pads to the hard plastic clamp plates, each of these processes is often prohibitively expensive for the manufacture of plastic hangers. The related art therefore attempts to inexpensively mount soft pads upon the hard plastic clamp plates such that when plate and pad are pressed together, a static friction bond is formed between mating surfaces of protrusions on the body and the joining-recesses in the pad. However, the related art is deficient in that during use, particularly during the insertion and removal of clothing, the moving fabric can catch on a perimeter edge of the soft pads and pull or xe2x80x9cpeelxe2x80x9d the soft pad off of the clamp plate.
Accordingly, the hanger of related art is deficient in that a pad of the related art is very vulnerable to being removed from the clamp body of the related art by a force or forces applied by the clothing that is to be hung upon the hangers of the related art. Therefore, a need exists to reduce the vulnerability of a pad to a removal from the body by forces as described.
The present invention provides an improved clamp pad-body assembly that resists the separation of the clamp pad from the clamp body. An aspect of the invention provides an improved clamp, including: a body having a peripheral surface that has a height that is greater than the height of the exterior perimeter surface of the pad, and the exterior perimeter surface of the pad abuts the perimeter surface of a recess in the clamp body.